Giant ending to baseball playoffs made perfect sense

By Dwight CollinsColumnist

Published: Wednesday, October 31, 2012 at 6:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, October 30, 2012 at 11:58 p.m.

The previous three weeks have been amazing and exhausting, sort of weird and flat-out phenomenal from an excitement standpoint.
And I'm not even referring to a college football season that has been busy making more relieving twists and uncomfortable turns than the hallway of a Halloween Horror Nights mansion.
While the BCS rankings are going through their annual bouts of number-crunching and public scrutiny with weekly exhilarations and trauma alternating tickles with deep wounds, it's still roughly a month away from deciding anything that truly matters.
No, what left me interested day after day during the previous three weeks were a group of baseball playoffs that I can't adequately compare to any others I've ever seen.
From the Day 1 elimination game that left the Atlanta Braves protesting and Chipper Jones' finale marred by a hail of Turner Field pizza boxes and souvenir cups to the nightcap that saw the Baltimore Orioles take down a Texas Rangers team that was — arguably — as good as any in the majors during the first 9/10ths of the season, the playoffs were overwhelming.
The divisional round produced four matchups and four series that went the distance with four winner-take-all games in an intense 30-hour span earlier this month.
An ill-advised bubble blown by Orioles outfielder Adam Jones provided the New York Yankees with the opening it took to advance. Though many, in hindsight, would've probably preferred the Bronx Bombers' season be ended at that point instead of watching virtually every star in their show either enter surgery or a severe ALCS funk during the ensuing days.
Meanwhile, on the NL side, the San Francisco Giants came back from an 0-2 hole in their best-of-five series to beat Cincinnati, then rebounded from a 3-1 deficit against St. Louis to take that series as well.
Fully experienced in the ways of picking themselves off the deck, the Giants — perhaps tired of the drama — then surgically put away Detroit in a four-game World Series sweep that made a household name out of Pablo Sandoval and allowed NL batting champ Buster Posey to hoist a championship trophy for the second time in the only two MLB seasons he's played from start to finish.
For the first time, it seems, that All-Star Game, winner-gets-home field designation really appeared to matter. In July, Sandoval and then-Giant Melky Cabrera roughed up Detroit's Justin Verlander, and San Francisco starter Matt Cain earned the win to allow the Giants to open the World Series at home. That, of course, led to a three-homer outburst by Sandoval and a blowout win that set the tone for an emphatic sweep.
Football season is enough to stand on its own, and the tip-off of the NBA schedule is a welcomed sight. But baseball was the star of the October show.
RANDOM THOUGHTS: Judging from what has happened during our most recent Super Bowl and latest World Series, I think if I was an NBA owner, I'd move quickly in an attempt to rename my franchise the Giants. ... It's really fulfilling to see that the whole blockbuster Theo Epstein offseason GM deal worked out so well for both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, who had 194 losses between them last season and a collective winning percentage that pushed barely above .400.
----Dwight Collins can be reached at dwight.collins@starbanner.com.

The previous three weeks have been amazing and exhausting, sort of weird and flat-out phenomenal from an excitement standpoint.
And I'm not even referring to a college football season that has been busy making more relieving twists and uncomfortable turns than the hallway of a Halloween Horror Nights mansion.
While the BCS rankings are going through their annual bouts of number-crunching and public scrutiny with weekly exhilarations and trauma alternating tickles with deep wounds, it's still roughly a month away from deciding anything that truly matters.
No, what left me interested day after day during the previous three weeks were a group of baseball playoffs that I can't adequately compare to any others I've ever seen.
From the Day 1 elimination game that left the Atlanta Braves protesting and Chipper Jones' finale marred by a hail of Turner Field pizza boxes and souvenir cups to the nightcap that saw the Baltimore Orioles take down a Texas Rangers team that was — arguably — as good as any in the majors during the first 9/10ths of the season, the playoffs were overwhelming.
The divisional round produced four matchups and four series that went the distance with four winner-take-all games in an intense 30-hour span earlier this month.
An ill-advised bubble blown by Orioles outfielder Adam Jones provided the New York Yankees with the opening it took to advance. Though many, in hindsight, would've probably preferred the Bronx Bombers' season be ended at that point instead of watching virtually every star in their show either enter surgery or a severe ALCS funk during the ensuing days.
Meanwhile, on the NL side, the San Francisco Giants came back from an 0-2 hole in their best-of-five series to beat Cincinnati, then rebounded from a 3-1 deficit against St. Louis to take that series as well.
Fully experienced in the ways of picking themselves off the deck, the Giants — perhaps tired of the drama — then surgically put away Detroit in a four-game World Series sweep that made a household name out of Pablo Sandoval and allowed NL batting champ Buster Posey to hoist a championship trophy for the second time in the only two MLB seasons he's played from start to finish.
For the first time, it seems, that All-Star Game, winner-gets-home field designation really appeared to matter. In July, Sandoval and then-Giant Melky Cabrera roughed up Detroit's Justin Verlander, and San Francisco starter Matt Cain earned the win to allow the Giants to open the World Series at home. That, of course, led to a three-homer outburst by Sandoval and a blowout win that set the tone for an emphatic sweep.
Football season is enough to stand on its own, and the tip-off of the NBA schedule is a welcomed sight. But baseball was the star of the October show.
<b>RANDOM THOUGHTS: </b>Judging from what has happened during our most recent Super Bowl and latest World Series, I think if I was an NBA owner, I'd move quickly in an attempt to rename my franchise the Giants. ... It's really fulfilling to see that the whole blockbuster Theo Epstein offseason GM deal worked out so well for both the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs, who had 194 losses between them last season and a collective winning percentage that pushed barely above .400.
----<BR>
<i>Dwight Collins can be reached at dwight.collins@starbanner.com.</i>